[HN Gopher] The Good Life: What can we learn from the history of...
___________________________________________________________________
The Good Life: What can we learn from the history of utopianism?
Author : Hooke
Score : 12 points
Date : 2023-10-10 21:54 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.thenation.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.thenation.com)
| chongli wrote:
| I took a philosophy course on utopian literature. My biggest
| takeaway is that every utopia has some marginalized group for
| which the society is less than a utopia (more like a dystopia).
| In Thomas More's _Utopia_ , this was a literal caste of gold-
| chained slaves.
|
| In the latter half of the course we studied dystopias and it
| became pretty clear these are two sides of the same coin. The
| issue with utopias is that they don't admit a plurality of
| lifestyles: they force everyone to conform. That, in itself, is
| dystopian to a lot of people.
|
| Real life is messy and people are different. A "proper" utopia
| for all is always going to be messy and imperfect; a work in
| progress.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| Did you by any chance read Aldous Huxley's "The Island"? The
| moral is that a utopia where tolerance for plurality is
| permitted is ideologically incapable of defending itself from
| external threats.
| m-i-l wrote:
| > _" The moral is that a utopia where tolerance for plurality
| is permitted is ideologically incapable of defending itself
| from external threats."_
|
| See also the Paradox of tolerance[0]: "Unlimited tolerance
| must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend
| unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we
| are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the
| onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be
| destroyed, and tolerance with them."
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
| nonameiguess wrote:
| It works reasonably well at the level of the entire planet.
| Every conceivable lifestyle is acceptable somewhere, and
| nobody has yet managed to conquer all nations to undo that.
| Where that doesn't help in practice is relocation is often
| difficult logistically and emotionally, communities exert a
| grip on people forcing them to stay, some countries forcibly
| won't let you leave, and, as far as I know, no country lets
| you freely enter and stay.
| pstuart wrote:
| Perhaps I was too young and naive at the time, but I took
| "The Island" to be an instruction manual on how to do it
| right (except for the ending, of course).
|
| Here and now, boys!
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Ezra Klein spent 80 minutes or so talking to Ghodsee back in June
| 2023. As I recall, it was a good conversation.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/09/opinion/ezra-klein-kriste...
|
| There's a transcript there if you prefer to read.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| Every dystopia starts off being someone else's utopia.
|
| Even the Federation. Just the existence of interplanetary hybrids
| (Spock being the basic example) combined with the repression of
| genetic engineering indicates the existence of a profession which
| may not be spoken of to make such things happen. (Yes, The
| Progenitors, they were fun, and the female Changeling to boot,
| but you still couldn't get easy cross-breeding) The Federation
| still keeps a lot on lockdown. They're not handing out Class 5
| replicators easily, they still ration holodeck usage, and so on.
| If anything, the Federation has always looked like a society
| where people are funneled into various professions based on some
| kind of convenience. Starfleet looks like a _great_ way to give
| the ambitious and rambunctious something to do while the rest of
| Earth pushes softly-glowing widgets around. And then there 's
| Quark's "root beer" analogy ...
|
| Count me as someone who fears the utopia.
| [deleted]
| GeoAtreides wrote:
| No mention of The Culture? I suppose it's not "history" per se,
| it's quite recent. For interested people, a short description of
| The Culture, as written by the author, can be found here:
| http://www.vavatch.co.uk/books/banks/cultnote.htm
|
| In short, it's literally "Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space
| Communism" and it's viewed by many as a perfect utopia. A few
| take a dimmer view, in my opinion because it exposes the
| underlining meaninglessness and purposelessness of the universe.
|
| The Culture forms the background for a excellent series of books
| written by Scottish author Iain M Banks; I fully recommend it.
| huytersd wrote:
| There's nothing particularly gay about it aside from a few
| instances spread across the series. Why attempt to poison a
| well that has such a devoted following?
| GeoAtreides wrote:
| The Culture doesn't have gendered pronouns and you can change
| your sex by thinking really hard (it's not joke); there's a
| social expectation that each individual would sire a child
| and be pregnant with one during their lifetime. Most people
| in the XXI century would agree that's at least a bit gay :)
| at_a_remove wrote:
| That's literally what "the kids" call it. You can look that
| phrase up.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-10-11 16:01 UTC)